There is indeed a rule...





That should cover it nicely...

Well, this rule covers "hits", but not "net hits". So when you cast a Force 10 Stunbolt and only use 1 hit, the enemy can easily resist and the spell won't take effect. Or am I misunderstanding something here?

edit: ooops, I guess I just didnt read your post right. Saw the rule about net hits now. I am sorry for my clumsiness regarding the rules. Thank you for clarifying.

No Worries Amazeroth...

IMO, that rule SHOULD mean that you choose twice: First, you roll, then choose how many hits you're using. Then, after resistance is rolled, you choose if you're adding net hit remaining. It sounds to me like people are letting the caster wait until after the target rolls resistance to determine how many hits are being used.

HuH, only the net hits used for damage increase the drain, so there no reason what so ever to not use all of your hits.

The reason you can choose to use less than all of your hits is because the rule there is general - some spells don't have any resistance.

Indeed...

Seems that this rule from page 204 of the SR4A is a very new one. It is not included in my printing. Is there any official source for this rule, so that I can show it to my fellow gamers? Because that rule would help me quite a bit with the drain of my spells. Please, help, I can't find that rule and I don't want to buy the newest printing only for 1 rule.

SR4A Changes Document p. 2

Thank you for that document. Still, I am missing the paragraph quoted above by Tymeaus:

I can't find that paragraph neither in my rulebook nor in the document you just linked. And I think that is a pretty important paragraph, since it allows to apply a variable number of net hits AFTER the resistance test.

Help anybody? Or should I open a thread for this? Because I tried google and it didn't help me.

Net hits applied to damage is obviously a subset of net hits, and since there is no rule forcing you to apply all net hits, you choose to use as many as you want.

So there is no paragraph stating your opinion? You are just assuming that you can apply as many net hits to damage as you wish, because there is no rule which says otherwise? I just want to be perfectly clear about this, because my group will nail me down on every word and try to fight that rule, I guess. They don't like mages as they are, but with this I can now better use my stunbolt, so they won't like it either.

So for example: I get 5 net hits with my force 7 stunbolt, after the target resisted. Now I can choose to only apply 3 of those net hits to damage and thus to the drain value? That is how I understand your interpretation of those paragraphs and that is how I hope it really is. Am I correct?

Excuse my clumsiness, I am just trying to get clear on this one and since English is not my mother tongue, I would like to have the reassurance. By the way, are there any official statements about that? And why isn't this a bigger deal? Because it seems like a pretty important rule change to me

Again, Amezeroth, the Printing of SR4A (as well as the LE Precious), and the updated PDF have the quote that I provided above. Page 204. It is not as if the words on paper do not actually exist.

As for your Drain Question. Net Hits ONLY apply to Drain if you use the OPTIONAL rule in the book.

That's it.

There has been a bit of an uproar when the rule was introduced as mandatory. Since then it was downgraded to optional so most people that don't like it simply don't use it.

Ok, thank you. I understand all your points.

But to be honest, that really isn't sufficient for me, since there seems to be no paragraph allowing me to really choose how many net hits I wanna apply to damage. As I understand it, I have to take all net hits or none of them. I REALLY hope I am wrong with that, but I just don't see it. Maybe that is because I don't have the rule before me, since my rulebook seems to be old.
The point of view "There is no rule which forbids me to chooose how many" isn't really fine with me, yet. Maybe I can adapt

Thanks anyway

The optional rule says that "every net hit used to increase damage add 1 point to drain", if you can't choose how many net hits to use, then that rule has a lot of unnecessary words.
Only reason to phrase the rule the way it is, is that you can freely shooce how many net hit to ably for damage, also if you can't then it's the only rule in the whole game that actively punishes the character for being good at what he does, something that should never ever happen.